Hi!

Me and my players have just finished a campain and I'm currently writing a new one. During this time we are just going to do random adventures and pursue sub-plot that they picked up during the campain. While doing this I want to try a new format and give them as much freedom as I can. My plan is to try and create "adventure-scripts" consisting of NPCs with stats and encounters depending on what sub plot they are following. So if they decide to follow a particular sub-plot, I'll just pick out that page and follow the steps I've outlined there.

However, this means that they will have the ability to travel where ever they want in the galaxy but I don't know how to calculate the Difficulty for such a random hyperspacejump. If they are on Nar Shadaa and decide to travel to Mon Calamari, I don't know what to say. In earlier adventures they have rarely needed to leave the system.

Is there a way to calculate how far and how difficult it is to travel from point A to point B, where ever these are?

There are no real standards, but I generally approach it as simply as possible. First, if you've heard of the planets, they likely have a reasonably fast and easy way to travel between them. If the PCs avoid all risks and use standard routes, I make the difficulty Easy or Average. If they are trying to avoid "Imperial entanglements", up the difficulty to Hard or Daunting. If nobody has ever heard of the place, you can use Formidable. You might throw in setback if they are working in a hurry or they have simply never been to a place themselves (which pretty much guarantees a setback if they are free roaming )

Side note: the module Beyond the Rim includes an interesting search for a planet in the Unknown regions, so that might be useful to pick up. Part one is all about gathering information to make the search less difficult.

You can deal with the narrative dice results in various ways. Success means they arrive of course, and more successes can trim some transit time. Triumph/Advantage means they got something useful out of it: a new route they can sell, saved credits on fuel, arrived in a good position relative to the Imperial blockade, etc. Threat would be the opposite of those. Despair should be interesting, say, arriving right in the middle of a space combat and nobody knows whose side they're on, but if you'd prefer not to interrupt your current story with a space battle you can always simply roll on the critical chart (unmodified). Failure can mean a variety of things. I usually let the PCs get there, but it takes a lot longer, putting pressure on some other clock they might be racing against.

Side note 2: the Fly Casual source book (for EotE) has a good table for using the narrative dice results, and another for transit times between common routes. You'll need a galactic map to make some comparisons. Personally I'm not a fan of these fixed values, since the movies and TCW pretty much show that if you have the right hyperspace route, distance is barely a factor, and you can cross half the galaxy in minutes. So this table is, IMHO, for people with "standard" routes...if you want better you have to either buy them or find them, and they can be extremely valuable.

If you want something simple, don't want to buy those books and don't want to look at a map, I'd just default to Average unless Point A or B is off the normal charts (aka you've never heard of it or it seems obscure). Then use a default of 5 days, +/- net failures/successes.

Listen to the Order 66 podcast on hyperspace travel. Some good info on RAW.

4 hours ago, Daeglan said:

Listen to the Order 66 podcast on hyperspace travel. Some good info on RAW.

Pretty much the best answer one is likely to get in this thread, with the episode in question is #91 "The Speed of Plot."